


Dave Strider's Stupid Fucking Jawline

by cumulativeChaos



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Kanaya throughout the whole fic: Wow I Am So Glad I Am A Lesbian Because Boys Are Actually So Stupid, Karkat wears floral shoes and nail polish, M/M, Mutual Pining, also he and Kanaya are basically morails, nepeta and aradia aren't even there they're just mentioned, terezi roxy equius nepeta and aradia don't have any lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 11:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4664337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cumulativeChaos/pseuds/cumulativeChaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So Karkat has a crush on Dave,” Jade says.</p>
<p>You and John both choke on your ice cream.  “Where the fuck did you hear <em>that</em> load of garbage?” you demand.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Generic high school AU.  Dave's jawline is really distracting and Karkat does NOT have a crush on him (shut up, Kanaya).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dave Strider's Stupid Fucking Jawline

 

 

You hate Dave Strider.

“I hate Dave Strider,” you announce.

“Nithe,” Sollux says in his infuriating lisp.

“And why do you hate him, Karkat?” Kanaya asks mildly, not looking away from her dedicated task of painting your nails a dark red.

“His jawline,” you blurt without thinking.  Most things you say or do come without thinking.

Kanaya arches a delicate and expertly plucked eyebrow.  “His jawline?”

“Yeah.”  You pull your hand away as you prepare to defend your case.  “It’s all smooth and sharp and kind of pointy, and whenever Mr. Howsare makes some racist slur he does this thing where he swallows and clenches his teeth and it makes his jawline look even sharper and makes me feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“Mithter Howthare ith the white englith teather with pictureth of hith ex-wife pinned around the room, right?” Sollux asks, poking your back.

“Yeah,” you say.

“Stop poking me,” you say.

“Karkat.”  Kanaya’s voice brings you back to the topic.  “You hate Dave because of his jawline?”

“Well, that’s not all of it,” you say defensively.  “He also has these stupid freckles that like, sit there on his nose and cheekbones and do _nothing_.  Not to mention the fact that his skin is literally perfect.  He’s a _high schooler_ , for fuck’s sake, he should have at least _one_ pimple.  And don’t get me started on his hair, oh my fucking—”

From behind you, you hear Sollux clear his throat and clearly enunciate the word “gay” for both you and Kanaya to hear.

You turn around to hit him, but the metal bars connecting your seat to your desk get in the way.  You try for the other direction, but his desk and the back of your chair prove to be too much of a distance and the only contact you succeed is lightly brushing your fingers across the front of his shirt.

“Wow.”  Sollux’s words drip with bored sarcasm.  “You thure thowed me.”

“Karkat,” Kanaya interrupts before you can open your mouth to retaliate, and you turn back to face her.  You find that both of her eyebrows are now perched alarmingly high on her forehead.

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure your feelings towards Dave are purely hatred?”  She asks as if she already knows the correct answer but she’s expecting to receive a lie.

“Of fucking course I’m sure, what else could an upset stomach and the feeling of nausea mean?”

Her eyebrows creep half an inch higher, and you are about to demand what that look is for when the tired-sounding voice of the teacher in charge of your study hall cuts you off.

“Miss Kanaya, if you could please put your nail polish away, the school is not a nail salon.”

“Of course, Mrs. Heap,” Kanaya replies in such a good-natured tone that you think the teacher starts to feel bad.

“I just don’t want you to accidentally spill anything onto the desk and then have to clean it up,” she explains apologetically, and you kind of want to laugh because Kanaya has never gotten nail polish anywhere other than exactly where she wanted it to go in all of your ten and a half years of knowing her.

But you don’t laugh.  You’re too busy staring in disappointment at your nails, which are nowhere near completion.

“You’ll finish these after school, right?” you ask Kanaya as she turns around to face the front of the room.

“Of course,” she says as though it were obvious.

 

* * *

 

You have eight periods in your normal school day.

You and Kanaya share two of those periods.  You, John, and Jade share one, and it’s a class Kanaya is also in.  Your other friends, Vriska, Terezi, and Nepeta, have no classes with you.  You have gym with Equius, but without Nepeta there he honestly just terrifies you.  Then there’s Sollux, who you’ve only met this year during your single shared period, study hall.  He’s also the only one who shares your lunch period.

That makes two periods of the day where you actually have friends, one period you have with someone who is less of a friend and more a friend of a friend, and one lunch period you have to share with a guy you barely know.

Dave is in seven of your eight periods, plus your lunch.

That means all but forty minutes of your day are spent with sweaty palms and a heated face and your stomach threatening to empty its contents onto your desk.  Which would be bad.  You’ve managed to avoid that so far, but you don’t know how much longer that can last.

You are convinced that the universe hates you.

 

* * *

 

You hate biology,

“I hate biology,” you announce to nobody in particular as you sit at your table in the biology lab.

“Don’t we all,” Dave Strider mutters in agreement as he walks past you, headed to his own seat on the other side of the room.

Even with all the distance, you still have a perfect view of him and his stupid fucking jawline.  You spend the whole class staring at it and imagining what it would feel like to bite it.

(He’s too far away for you to see his freckles, though, and your disappointment only has to do with how you didn’t get to hate him with the amount of vigor you normally do.)

 

* * *

 

 

“I’ve decided to quit school and become a teen runaway,” you say to Sollux around a mouthful of the school’s Chicken Variation #12, which was a flower-shaped patty placed on a slightly moldy piece of bread and soaked in a mildly concerning amount of ketchup.

“Good for you,” Sollux says.  His hand is busy rummaging around his lunchbox for his bag of honeycomb-shaped cereals.  “Live your dreamth.”

“Oh, I will,” you assure him.  “I’m going to run so far that nobody will ever see or hear from me again.  It’ll be great.”

“Are you really gonna run?” Sollux asks.  “I mean, no offenthe, but in gym you kinda thuck at the bi-yearly mile.”

You glare at him, but he’s too preoccupied with his stupid cereal to notice.

And then Dave Strider shows up out of nowhere because he’s an asshole and you hate him.

“Hey, my dear friends over at the cool people table started being unapologetically transphobic, so can I ditch them for you guys?” he says.

You’re kind of impressed by how he managed to avoid sounding pathetic while asking if he could sit with you, but you’re too distracted by his stupid fucking jawline and his useless freckles to pay attention.

“Thure,” Sollux says, gesturing to the seat in front of him.

“No!” you shout over him, tearing your gaze away from his jaw and into his stupid shades.  “No, sorry, this table is full, find someone else to take you in.”

Dave just stares at you for a long moment.  Or maybe he’s glancing at the circular table, built to seat nine, with only you and Sollux sitting at it.  It’s hard to tell when he has those stupid sunglasses.

“Ignore him, pleathe,” Sollux says, rolling his eyes.  “Thit wherever you want.”

He ends up closer to you than Sollux, although not in the seat completely next to you.  With him this close, you can see every freckle that isn’t covered up by his shades, and you’re finding it increasingly difficult to swallow your #12.

“Is that honeycomb-shaped cereal?” he asks Sollux.

“Yeth.”  Chunks of yellow cereal fly to Sollux’s tray.  “Beeth are the thit.”

Dave nods.  “Cool.”

You find yourself cursing the name of every god who was ever worshipped, and then some.

 

* * *

 

“So Karkat has a crush on Dave,” Jade says.

You and John both choke on your ice cream.  “Where the fuck did you hear _that_ load of garbage?” you demand.

“ _Dave_?”  Poor John looks completely shocked.

Jade ignores you.  “Yes, our very own Dave Strider.”  She grins gleefully.  “He was apparently ranting about all the beautiful aspects of Dave’s appearance, from his jawline to his freckles to his flawless skin.”  She sighs.  “He does have really good skin, I’ll give you that.”

“Who the fuck told you this?” you ask again.

“Rose, duh,” she says, grinning evilly at the mention of Dave’s twin sister.  “Kanaya was talking about your conversation during study hall, plus in tech class Sollux mentioned how flustered you were during lunch today.”

“ _Hate_ ,” you say.  “I _hate_ Dave Strider.  I do not have a _crush_ on Dave Strider, because that would be completely ridiculous and I– _stop giving me that look, Jade_.”

“What look?” she says sweetly, still giving you that look.

“That one!  That look right there!”  You gesture to her face.  “John, back me up here!”

“Jade, stop giving him a hard time,” John says.  He has ice cream on his shirt.  “He says he doesn’t like Dave, so then he doesn’t like Dave!”

“Thank you!” you cry.  “John, you are officially my new favorite.”

John’s smile is ridiculously goofy.  “Yay.”

 

* * *

 

“Why the hell have you been telling people I have a crush on Dave Strider?” you scream into the phone.

“I have done no such thing,” Kanaya replies cooly.

“Then why did Jade accuse me of having a crush on him, saying that Rose told her that you told Rose that I was ranting about the ‘beautiful aspects’ of his face or some shit?”

“I simply told Rose everything you had said about her brother, word-for-word.”  Kanaya’s voice is calm and collected and you want to punch her through the phone.  “If there were any embellishments, those would have come from Rose herself.”

“Way to throw your crush under the bus, Kan, I’m sure she’d really appreciate it,” you say just to get under her skin.

It works.

She sighs, frustrated, and there’s just the slightest edge to her voice as she says, “I have to study for our test tomorrow, Karkat, so goodnight” and hangs up.

“Hah!”  You feel unreasonably vindicated at having made her as annoyed as you.  Well, probably not as annoyed, but still somewhat frustrated.

A second later you’re calling her in a panic.

“ _WHAT TEST TOMORROW_?”

 

* * *

 

During the last few minutes of second period, when everyone had handed in the test (that you had totally bombed, wow, that was going to fuck up your grade in a big way) and you’re busy wallowing in your misery after being abandoned by your best friend, you hear a familiar dorky voice cheerfully chatting with a slightly less familiar deadpan voice.

You begin to sweat.

“—and Jade tried to say that Karkat has a crush on you, but he totally hates you, so I don’t understand why she thought that!” John says happily.

You slam your face onto the desk.  Nobody notices.

“He hates me, huh?”  You can feel a pair of eyes trained at your back, and your try to pretend like you aren’t clutching your pencil hard enough to break it.

“Yeah, he didn’t actually explain why, but he seemed pretty angry!”

Okay, so you can _understand_ why John is telling Dave this, since the two of them have literally been best friends since they were eight and John gave Dave his favorite pair of sunglasses because Dave had broken his (they were the same glasses on his face now, actually), but you don’t understand why he has to tell him _while you can hear every word they’re saying_.  Maybe John thinks you can’t hear them, but come _on_ , Egbert, there’s only two rows of desks between you and the two of them and everyone else’s chatter is pretty quiet.

“Did Jade explain why she thought he had a crush on me?” Dave asks, and nope, you are not going to sit here with his eyes staring at the back of your head as he and John discuss the possibilities (however nonexistent they might be) of you having a crush on him.

“Miss Elwood, can I please use the restroom?” you ask, standing up so suddenly that the kid in the desk in front of you, who you think was asleep, jolts out of his chair in fear.

“Miss Harley already has the class bathroom pass—”

“It’s an emergency,” you say, and from the way you’re fidgeting nervously you’re pretty sure you give off that impression.

“Alright, be quick, class is almost over,” she says.

You catch Kanaya’s eye as you hurry to the door, but she’s too busy talking to Rose to worry about your dilemma (what a great friend, really).  In a panic, you glance over to John, but instead you see Dave’s lips curled into, not a smirk, like you’d expect, but a full, teeth-showing, shit-eating grin.

Here comes the pukey feeling again.

 

* * *

 

 

After second period comes your study hall, which you spend sulking in a highly aggressive silence.  Kanaya doesn’t even bother to try and talk to you, which is honestly for the better.  You’d probably snap at her and say things you’d regret later, so this tense silence is probably for the best.

Sollux doesn’t seem to care whether you’re angry or not.

Fourth period is biology, and you and Dave are immediately whisked away to your separate lab tables to begin an experiment.  You do your best to not look towards Dave, but you can feel his eyes on you as you and your stoner lab partner fuck up the assignment in a tremendous way.

(Dave doesn’t have a lab partner, and he completes the assignment before anyone else.  You hate him a little more for that.)

At lunch, you’re expecting some sort of retribution from Dave, but instead he chats it up with Sollux, not giving you anything more than the occasional glances as he speaks.

You figure it’s because Sollux is there that he doesn’t say anything.  By next period he’ll probably corner you and interrogate you while doing that thing with his jaw that makes your brain go “wut” and your tongue stop working.

But the only thing he says to you when you sit down in English is, “I like your nail polish.”

It takes you a second to register what he said.  “Huh?  Oh, yeah.  Thanks.”

He nods.

You nod.

Neither of you exchange a word for the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

You have a problem.

“Dave Strider won’t stop complimenting me,” you say.

You should not have told Jade this.

“ _Really_?” she squeals, and you clap a hand over her mouth, hissing at her to shut the hell up, Harley.

She licks your hand.

You recoil in disgust.

She grins.

Everything is terrible and you want to die.

“Okay but seriously, what is he complimenting you on?”

“Uh, it was my nail polish the first day,” you say, counting each compliment on your fingers.  “Then on Thursday he said he liked my shoes.  Friday he said I had good handwriting in the morning, and he complimented my doodle of Mr. Howsare in English.  Then over the weekend Rose and Kanaya were hanging out when I showed up at Kan's house, and when Strider showed up to pick Rose up he said he liked my shirt.”

Jade was beaming, and it was kind of scaring you.  “What shoes did he like?”

“The flower ones.”

“Shirt?"

“The grey v-neck t-shirt that you forced me to buy.”

“Ooh, that one makes you look hot.”You stare at her for a long moment before muttering a soft tsk under your breath.  “As if I’m not always hot as hell.”

“You are always hot,” Jade agrees.  “That’s why you should flirt back.”

If you were eating ice cream, you would choke on it.  “W-what?”

“He’s _flirting_ with you, Karkat.”  She says it as if it should be obvious.  “You gotta flirt back if you wanna tap that.”

“I don’t want to tap anything,” you say.  “I want to punch him in his stupid jawline.  And why the hell would he flirt with me?”

“You just said that you’re always hot!”

“Well, yeah.”  You cross your arms.  “But that was a joke.”

Jade’s face softens when she hears your words fall quiet.  She places a hand on your arm and gives you a small smile.  “Well, flirting or not, at the least you should pay him a compliment in return.”

“What?”

“He’s complimented you, what, four out of the last five days?” she asks.  “He hasn’t done anything yet today, has he?”

“Yes and no,” you reply.  “It’s only second period.”

“Beat him to it,” she says.  “Say his hair looks nice or something.”

You scrunch your face up in confusion.  “That’s flirting.”

“Whatever,” she waves her hand dismissively.  “Say it anyway.”

You glare at her in silence as your teacher walks by your desk.  When she’s gone, you turn to Jade and say, “I’ll compliment his shoes, okay?  He has nice shoes.”

She scrunches her nose.  “The red converse?”

You nod.

“He wears them every day.”

“They’re still nice!”

Jade rolls her eyes.  “Whatever.”

 

* * *

 

Fourth block, you turn to Dave before he walks past your desk.

“I like shoe,” you say.

Dave stops and stares.

“I mean.”  You clear your throat.  “I like your.  Shoe.   _Shoes_.  I like your shoes.”

“Oh.”  You’re pretty sure Dave blinks, but again, fuck his stupid shades.

You’re about to internally rant about all the inconveniences of wearing sunglasses indoors when Dave smiles.  At you.  He smiles.  He doesn’t smirk, and he doesn’t give you that shit-eating grin that’s been stuck in your head since last Wednesday.  He smiles.

(Granted, it’s a pretty small smile, but Dave rarely makes any expression other than his blank deadpan, so _holy shit he’s smiling_.)

(Oh god here comes that pukey feeling again, but with a thousand times more force than ever before.)

“Thanks,” he says.

“Yeah, thanks,” you repeat.  “I mean—shit, uh, you’re welcome.”

You want to die.

You decide to kill Harley.

 

* * *

 

It’s lunch and you want to kill Harley.

 

* * *

 

It’s fifth period and you want to kill Harley.

 

* * *

 

It’s sixth period and you want to kill Harley.

 

* * *

 

It’s seventh period and you want to kill Harley.

 

* * *

 

It’s eighth period and you forgot all about killing Harley because Dave just complimented your hair.

You’re having trouble breathing, also, but oxygen seems pretty secondary at this point.

(He also smiled when he said it, holy shit, you really think you're going to lose your lunch.)

 

* * *

 

 

You don’t mention what you’ve seen to Kanaya on the phone or to any of your other friends when you text them to avoid doing homework.  You don't talk about it on your way to school with Jade and John the next day.  You don’t bring it up to anyone during homeroom, and you weren’t planning to say anything the rest of the day, except you and Dave somehow end up being the last people to shuffle out of second block.

“Time for literally the only class we don’t share together,” he says.

Your head whips around to stare at him, and you find that he’s got a tiny lopsided grin.

Wow okay you’re going to puke this time for real.

“Have fun without me,” he says, then leaves without waiting for a reply (which is a good thing, because you don’t think you’d be able to supply a coherent response).

 

* * *

 

“KANAYA I NEED TO TALK TO YOU,” you shout, out of breath from running all the way to study hall.

“Keep it down, Karkat,” says the teacher.

You ignore her and run over to your usual desk, grabbing Kanaya by the shoulders.

“Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kanaya Kan—”

“Karkat, thut the hell up,” Sollux says.

“Kanaya help me I’m going to die.”

Kanaya sighs and turns around, looking completely done with this conversation even though it’s barely begun.  “What is it, Karkat?”

“Okay, but first, I’d just like to say fuck you for leaving me to walk to this class by myself, some friend you are.”

“I apologize.”

“Alright, cool.  Now, second: have you ever seen Dave smile?”

Suddenly Kanaya seems more interested in this conversation.  “I’ve seen him smirk before, but never smile, why?”

You suck in a deep breath.  “Okay, that’s it, he’s doing this on purpose I swear, what a fucking _asshole_ —”

“Karkat, you aren’t making any sense.”

You sit down at your desk, letting your limbs flop uselessly against your chair.  “I’ve seen him smile like three times now and every time he does it I feel like I can’t breathe and remember that pukey feeling I told you I got whenever he did that thing with his jaw?  Yeah it makes me feel like that only a million times worse and if you’re saying that you haven’t seen him smile at all than he’s probably doing it on purpose to make me want to die so I think I’m going to kill him, Kanaya, I really really think I’m going to have to end Dave Strider’s life.  I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison because some asshole kept smiling at me and making me feel like I had some kind of fever or something and—"

“Karkat, breathe.”

Oh.  You forgot to breathe.

You start breathing again.

“Okay.”  Kanaya’s face is hard to read, but she’s staring at you intently, so you figure she’s thinking something really important.  “So, Dave has smiled at you?”

“Three times,” you say weakly.

She nods.  “And every time he does it you’re going to puke?”

“Yes,” you say.  “I hate him.”

“Thure you do, KK,” Sollux mutters, and whoops, you kind of forgot he was there.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Captor?”

Kanaya grabs your arm before you can turn around.  “Karkat,” she says, and you realize that she’s been saying your name a lot.  She only does this when she thinks you’re being stupid.  “Have you ever heard of the term ‘butterflies in your stomach’?”

You give her a Look.  “Kanaya, you _know_ what my movie taste is,” you tell her.  “And you know what books I read.  Of course I have.”

She nods.  “So when you say that you feel like you’re going to puke, how would you describe that feeling?”

“Like that time when we went on the High Drop coaster at Alternia Park and I threw up.”

“Wait.”  Her hand falls back to her side.  “You actually feel like when you threw up?”

“No, I feel like when we went down the big drop part.”

“Oh.”  She looks relieved.  “Ok, that’s basically the feeling people are describing when they say they have butterflies in their stomach.”

“Alright,” you say.

Then you realize what she’s implying.

“Okay, _fuck_ you, I am going to go spend the rest of this period in the bathroom avoiding you, thanks.”

Kanaya shakes her head like a mother laughing at the foolishness of her child.  “Do what you will.”

 

* * *

 

Study hall in the bathroom is not as fun as you’d hoped.

The boy’s bathroom smells like pot and fart and some nerd is crying in one of the stalls at the end of the room.

You end up spending two minutes breathing through your mouth before you give up and spend your study hall not talking to Kanaya.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t say a word to Dave,” you say as you glare distrustfully at Chicken Variation #6, which is soggy chicken nuggets.

“About what?” Sollux asks.

You wave your hands in front of you in an agitated manner.  “Study hall.  That thing that Kanaya said.”

“What, about you being thuper gay for him?  Nah,” Sollux takes a swig from a flask that you were told is filled with lemonade.  “Thatth nothin' new.  If I wath gonna thay thomethin', I would’a done it already.”

"What do you mean, ' _that's nothing_ —"

"'Sup," Dave says, sitting down next to you and effectively cutting you off in the middle of your sentence.  "What're you yelling about, Karkat?"

"Sollux has a flask," you say quickly.

"Wait, what."  Dave turns to the gangly boy in question.  "What."

"It'th lemonade, ok, get off my back, both of you."

 

* * *

 

“Everything is terrible and I want to die,” you say to yourself as you sit down in English.

“Don’t do that,” Dave says as he walks by.

You flip him off behind his back.

 

* * *

 

"So, we had to run the mile today," John says conversationally on your way home.  "Which means you'll have to run it pretty soon."

You begin to cry.

"Oh Karkat," Jade coos, rubbing your back.  "Please shut the fuck up."

You have terrible friends.

"I'm going to die," you say when you've calmed down enough to speak.  "This is going to be the year that the mile actually kills me."

"You'll live," Jade says.  "Suck it up."

"I'm sure you'll do great, Karkat!" John says.  He's much better at comforting you than Jade is.  "Maybe you'll even break ten minutes!"

"Isn't Dave in your gym class?" Jade asks.

"What class of mine is he _not_ in?" you retort.

"Try to keep up with Dave, then!" she suggests cheerfully.

You stare at her.  "Jade, have you _seen_ him run? He'll be done before I've even finished the first lap!"

 

* * *

 

Turns out you have to run the mile the very next day.

Dave actually finishes when you're about one-third of the way done with your second lap, which somehow isn't much better than your prediction.  You see the gym teacher give Dave a pat on the back, and you see Dave take several gulps of water before taking off at a jog, cutting across the field in the middle of the track.

Towards you.

What.

"Hey," he says when he's caught up to you.

"Leave," you wheeze.

"What lap are you on?" he asks, ignoring your demand.

You don't have to tell him anything.

You tell him you're on your second lap.

"Really?" he asks.  "Come on, you can do better than this."

"No."

"Sure you can," he says.  "You've already picked up the pace since I've gotten here.

You hadn't noticed that.  "Whatever."

"Hey."  You kind of hate how he's barely out of breath.  "If you can talk, you're going too slow."

"What-"

"Run with me!"

And then he sets off at a much, much faster pace than you've ever attempted (but still probably a very slow pace for him).  He gets about ten feet away before you decide " _fuck it_ " and sprint to catch up to him.

"That's it!" he says.  He doesn't comment on how hard you're breathing.  "Two laps down, Karkat, you're halfway there."

You don't respond.

"Your form is shit, by the way."  Oh god, he's still talking.  How is he even talking? "Your hands shouldn't cross in front of your body.  And you shouldn't clench them so hard, that wastes energy."

You try to fix whatever he's pointing out to you, from how your shoulders are too hunched and your head pointing too far to the ground.  You kind of feel like an idiot, but when Dave says, "Look at that form, damn, like straight out of a running magazine cover," you decide to stick to his advice.

Some people are noticing you and Dave, glaring as if you’re cheating somehow.  You’re actually passing a few people you’ve never beaten before (not that you’ve ever beaten _anyone_ , but whatever), and you would smile if you weren’t in so much pain.

(Literally, _so much pain_ , what kind of fucked-up masochist does this for _fun_?)

"Alright," he says when you finish your third lap.  "This is the end, so we're gonna pick up the pace."

Your eyes widen.  "N-no..."

"Hell fucking yes, Karkat, let's pick it up—don't let your form slip, bro."

Your legs feel weak.  Your lungs are filled with sand.  Your throat is too tight to get enough oxygen in.  Your side is burning like a motherfucker.  You are going to die.

"Almost there, Karkat, you got this shit."

There's a weird burning sensation in your stomach, and you have so much spit in your mouth that it's making it harder to breathe.  You spit into the grass, but more spit comes up to replace it.

"Ok, last stretch coming up, so you're going to sprint like there's a serial killer behind you, okay? See Equius over there? I want you to pass him.  Beat him to the finish line, alright, you're going to—woah!"

You're not a great sprinter.  You're not a great anything, really.  But as soon as you hit the last quarter of a lap, the straightaway, you take off at the fastest speed you've ever gone.  Equius (who, for all his intense bodybuilding, is a terrible runner), looks up in surprise as you pass him, and you feel a strange sense of pride when you hear Dave, who’s still jogging far behind you, cheering for you as you cross the finish line.

"Wow!"  The gym teacher looks astounded.  "Nine minutes and twenty-three seconds, Karkat!"

You feel great.

You feel accomplished.

You feel—

Oh no.

"Fuck yeah, Karkat, I knew you could do it!" Dave says, passing the finish line for the second time.  He rests a hand on your shoulder, which is probably really gross and sweaty, and gives you a bright, beaming smile.  "New personal record, how about—oh, don't bend over, that makes it harder to get enough air—"

"Strider," you wheeze, trying to push him away.

"What's wrong, man, are you okay?"

"I–I'm gonna—"

You puke all over his shoes.

 

* * *

 

"What did you eat before running?" Dave asks as he walks with you to the nurse's office.  On his feet are nothing but holey socks.

"Number nine," you say.

"What?"

"You know."  You gesture to nothing in particular.  "Chicken variation number nine.  The wrinkly chicken leg."

"What?"  He's laughing now, but you don't see how it's funny.

"Because the school serves some form of chicken nine out of ten days," you explain.  "And there's, like, twenty-five different forms of it."

" _Seriously_? And you have them numbered?"  He's still laughing.  Why is he laughing?

"Yeah, there's the yellow chicken nuggets as number six, and number twelve is the flower-shaped patty, and number seven is the dinosaur nuggets—come on, you've seriously never noticed all the chicken?"

"I never eat the school lunch," he says.  "But, yeah, anything the school serves is probably not good pre-running food."  He shoves his hand into his pocket.  "Hey, look, the nurse's office."

 

* * *

 

"So,  _you're_ here because you threw up," the nurse says, handing you an ice pack before turning to Dave.  "But why are _you_ here?"

Dave holds up his shoes.  Thankfully they’re his shitty gym class sneakers and not the red converse you complimented the other day.  You’d have felt _really_ bad if you puked on those.

"Oh."  The nurse looks pale.  "Well, we have spare shoes in the bin over there, if you want to try and find some that fit you."

"Cool."  He heads towards the bin she mentioned.

He returns within seconds.  "What do you think?"

You sit up to see his feet.

He's wearing purple sequin Uggs.

You nod approvingly.  "Keep them."

 

* * *

 

You and Dave talk all the time now.

_You_ and _Dave_ talk _all the time now_.

_You and Dave talk all the time now_.

"Me and Dave talk all the time now," you tell Kanaya.  "We walk to classes together and talk when we're supposed to be working in class."

"And do you still feel like throwing up?" she asks.

You shake your head.  "No, now I feel like all my skin is on fire and also like my chest is going to explode."

"Gaaaaaaaay," Sollux whispers.

"No," you say.  "I still hate him."

"But you talk to him _all the time now_ ," Sollux tries.

"I also talk to you," you point out.

You hear Kanaya chuckle.

 

* * *

 

You've never talked to Rose Lalonde.  Which you guess makes you a bad best friend, since Kanaya is so obviously in love with her and therefore it's your job to make sure her crush is worthy.  But Rose kind of scares you, so you decide that you can let this be one tiny notch in your "not a good friend" belt.

But you don't know why Rose is cornering you.

"Karkat Vantas.”  Her black-stained lips look intimidatingly mesmerizing as they form your name.

"Rose Lalonde."  You hope your voice isn't as squeaky as you feel it is.

"I'm here on behalf of my brother," she explains.  "Not that he knows that I'm here at all.  But still, I do know my brother well, and I know that he would like you to come to our Halloween party this weekend.  That is, if you don't already have plans for the holiday."

"Uh."  You blink.  "You're having a party?"

"Well," she inspects her dark purple nails (which you suspect were done by Kanaya), "it's more of a small get together.  Be sure to bring a bathing suit."

"You have a pool?" you ask stupidly.

She stares at you.  "We live in Texas."

"Right."

"Anyway."  Rose drops her hand to her hip.  "I'd ask you to bring Kanaya with you, but I wish to ask her personally."

"Should I make sure she wears her hottest bikini?" you ask dryly.

Rose smirks slightly.  "It would be appreciated.  Although I'm sure she'll look wonderful no matter what she wears."

"Damn right she will," you say, nodding.

"Well, this has been fun," Rose says.  "Good luck in Biology, Dave tells me you will be starting a new lab."

Your eyes widen in horror.  "Oh _shit_."

 

* * *

 

You walk in to bio only to find that your partner is late.

But Dave isn't.  And he's sitting in your partner's chair.

"What are you doing?" you hiss as you take your seat.

"Your pot-smoking lab partner has been caught by their parents and sent to rehab, so we probably won't see them for the rest of the year," he says.  "And since I haven't had a lab partner the whole year, I was assigned to fill the lab-partner shaped hole in your heart."

"There is no lab-partner shaped hole in my chest," you say.

"Yes, because I'm filling it."

"There was never any hole to begin with."

"Well, then I'll just have to fill a different hole."

You whip your head around.  Dave's got one eyebrow raised and a smirk playing across his lips.

You punch him in the (stupid fucking) jaw.

 

* * *

 

"You're not even sorry, are you?" Dave asks as he holds an ice pack to his rapidly bruising jaw.

"Well," you say, "if I get suspended I will be."

"Nah."  Dave shakes his head.  "I'm not gonna tell them you punched me."

"Oh."  That's unexpected.  Now you are kind of sorry.  "Still not sorry," you tell him.

"Well, it didn't hurt much, anyway," Dave says.  "It'll probably bruise for a week or so.  How does it look?"

He removes the ice pack and tilts his chin up so you can see the bruise forming on the right side of his face.  It's small, really, and someone like Kanaya could probably cover it up with makeup.  You try not to feel disappointed at your lack of strength.

"It looks horrible," you say.  "But it's an improvement from your normal look."

Dave flips you off just as the nurse comes back into the room with a second ice pack for your hand.

 

* * *

 

"So you punched Dave," Jade states as her cousin pulls out of the school parking lot.

You groan.  "How many people know?"

"Not that many," she assures you.  "More people just know that Dave got punched without actually knowing who did it."  She shrugs.  "You're not popular enough for many people to care."

"And I like it that way," you say.

"How did you get away with it, though?" John ask from the front seat.

"Teacher didn't see," you explain.  "And the nurse didn't care enough to report it."

"Oh," John says.

"Hey, you were invited to Dave and Rose's party, right?" Jade asks, changing the subject.

"Uh, yeah."

"Well, we were too, obviously."  She smiles.  "So do you wanna carpool with us?"

"Sure," you say.

"Do you even know where Dave lives?" John asks.

"No."

"Oh man."  John chuckles.  In her seat beside you, Jade does the same.  "You're going to love it."

 

* * *

 

"Are we going to the party together?" Kanaya asks you.

"John and Jade are giving me a ride," you say, "so if you come here they can probably take you."

Kanaya hums and falls silent.  You can tell her mind is on other things.

"Wear the striped bikini," you say.

"What?"

"To the party.  Wear the striped suit."

"I–okay?"

You nod, then realize she can't see you nod.  "Alright.  I gotta read these notes on the lab I missed."

"Good night," Kanaya says before hanging up.

 

* * *

 

You, Jade, John, and Kanaya leave at a time that will have you arriving fashionably late, at Kan’s insistence.  She's nervous, but she's doing a good job at hiding it.

You, on the other hand, are not nervous at all.  Why would you be nervous? It's just a small party with people you (probably) know, there's nothing to stress about.

"Are you taking us into the desert to kill us?" you ask John, who's driving yet again.

"Nope."  He pops the "p".  "We're almost there."

All you can see is sand, shrubs, and trees.  You begin to wonder if the Strider-Lalondes live underground.

 

* * *

 

Holy shit.

Holy _shit_.

_Holy shit_.

"Holy shit," you breathe.

"Wow," Kanaya mutters.

"Told ya you'd love it!" John says cheerfully as he parks the car in front of Dave's mansion.

_Mansion_.

A fucking _mansion_.

"Let's go home," you say.

Kanaya doesn't say anything, but you can see from the way she bites her lip that she agrees with you.

"Get out of the car, losers!" Jade says, hopping out of the passenger seat.

"Actually, I think I'll stay here for a while," you respond meekly.

Kanaya nods.

"No fucking way, fuckass!" Jade rips your door open and grabs you by the bicep, pulling you out of the car and onto the bubbling driveway.  "Let's go, you're gonna swim and party and see Dave shirtless and it'll be great!"

Your brain stops working at "see Dave shirtless."

"Come _on_!" Jade shouts, pulling you towards the mansion against your will.  John laughs as you struggle, but he doesn't help her drag you to the front door.

As you reach the doormat, you hear Kanaya approach from behind, and you assume she didn't want to sit in the car by herself for several hours.  She'd probably have died from the heat, so you guess it's a good thing she gave in.

John rings the doorbell, which you can hear echo inside.  When the chiming falls silent, there's a crackling sound of static from somewhere above you, and then–

"Hey, welcome to the Strider crib, who the fuck are y–"

"I live here too, Dave."

"Yeah, but I'm the man of the house, so it gets my na–OW, FUCK, ROSE!"

You bite your lip to keep from smiling.

"Hello," says a cool voice.  In the background, you can hear Dave still cursing.  "Who's there?"

"Just us!" Jade says cheerfully.  "We brought Karkles and Kanaya, too."

"Hello Jade, John, Karkat, _Kanaya_." Rose adds an emphasis on Kanaya's name, and you look over to see her blush.  "Come right in.  Jade and John, you know how to get to the backyard."

The door clicks open, and you suddenly want to run right back to the car.

"Thanks, Rose!" John says, striding right through the doorway looking completely at ease.  Jade bounced after him, which leaves you and Kanaya to tentatively shuffle inside.  You close the huge door behind you and try not to look like you're in total awe of the inside of the mansion.

"Come on, guys, the pool's this way!"  Jade takes off towards the back of the house.

You swallow.

You begin to sweat.

You feel like you're going to puke again.

You take Kanaya's hand.

"Off we go," you say weakly.

Kanaya smiles.  "Indeed."

 

* * *

 

The pool is big, but you would be lying if you said you weren't expecting a lake-sized pool with a huge waterslide that blended in with a rock-wall waterfall.

There's a diving board and a crappy mobile basketball net.  That's about it.

You’re good with that.  It makes at least one thing about this whole experience less overwhelming.

There's a tremendously small amount of people, also, so it makes the pool look even bigger.  You're kind of surprised to see that you recognize almost everyone there.  “Almost everyone” being Terezi and Vriska, along with Rose and Dave.  The only person you don’t know is a blonde-haired girl chatting loudly with Rose.

You feel Kanaya stiffen beside you.  You give her hand a squeeze.

“Cannonball!” Jade shouts, already stripped down to her bathing suit.  A dark-skinned blur flies through the air before a tidal wave of water splashes out of the side of the pool.

“Hey, John!” Vriska shouts.  She and Terezi are sitting at the edge of the deep end, kicking their feet lazily in the water.  “Can you do a swan dive for us?”

“Okay!” John replies cheerfully, tearing his shirt off and running towards the diving board.

“Tweet tweet, lifeguard Dave says to not run by the pool, John,” Dave says, his head popping out of the water.  “Get your shit together, man.”

You’re laughing at Dave’s joke just as he sees you, smiles, and pushes himself out of the pool.

Oh no.

“Oh no.”

Dave pulls himself onto the blinding white cement, his hair soaked and beads of water falling from his (stupid fucking) jawline to his bare chest to his—

Abs.

Dave Strider has abs.

_Dave Strider_ has _abs_.

Dave Strider is a high schooler and he has abs.

Are high schoolers even allowed to have abs?

It should be illegal.

It should be illegal for high schoolers to have abs because Dave is walking towards you and probably saying something but you can’t focus on anything except the fact that holy shit Dave Strider has abs.

“Hey, glad you could make it,” Dave says, smiling like you aren’t staring at his abs.

“You’re mean,” you say.

Kanaya elbows you in the ribs.

“I mean—yeah, hi.”

Kanaya smiles to make up for your ineptitude, surreptitiously pulling her hand from your grasp.  “I’m going to go swim,” she announces before prancing away from you in the midst of your mental breakdown.

Some best friend.

“Are you going to swim?” Dave asks.  He reaches his arms up to stretch his back and fuck, he’s doing that on purpose, what a _fucking asshole_.  You really, really hate him right now, and you feel like you’re going to puke.

“Uh, probably not.”  You voice doesn’t crack and you praise every god you know of.  “I don’t like to swim.”

Dave raises an eyebrow, which you know forewarns disaster.  “Is your phone in your pocket?”

You shake your head.  “It’s in Jade’s bag, why?”

Dave Strider is a bit of a genius, because he very obviously flashed that very distracting tooth-showing grin on purpose.  You know this is true because had you not been distracted by his smile you would have been able to avoid his hands as he reached out, grabbed you around the waist, and flung you into the pool.

You kind of sit at the bottom of the pool for a few seconds as the feeling of his arms lifting you off the ground slowly fades.  Even when it’s gone, the skin there still tingles strangely.

Dave is practically crying with laughter when you resurface.  You flip him off with both hands.

“You look like an angry cat forced to take a bath,” Jade says somewhere to your right.  You can’t see her because your hair, heavy and soaked with chlorine water, is covering your eyes.

“I will kill you,” you say to both Jade and Dave.

Mostly Dave.

 

* * *

 

By the time the sun is setting, you are exhausted.

You actually managed to have a lot of fun for once in your life, and you feel pretty good about that.  And you didn’t even need to cling to Kanaya like an obsessive baby koala.  This is a new experience for you, and you’ve got to say, you’re kind of liking it.

Most of the day you spent hanging out with Dave and John, which was weird at first.  But John is one of the most disgustingly nice people you know, and Dave seems to have a penchant for pissing you off, so between the two of them you weren't left out.

Lame-ass trick shots in the basketball net, leaping off the diving board again and again, shooting each other with weak water guns, and countless rounds of chicken took up your entire afternoon, and you can feel your tragically nonexistent abs aching from the amount of laughing you did.

(You mostly played chicken on Kanaya's shoulders, but there were two rounds where Dave had you on his shoulders, and the feeling of his hands on your knees and thighs made you feel like throwing up, which meant you two made a terrible team.  You don’t care)

You also learned that the blonde girl talking to Rose was named Roxy, and she was Dave and Rose's cousin who was visiting for the weekend.  Kanaya seemed pretty pleased when she told you this.

As the sun began to set and it was harder to see your surroundings, everyone got out of the pool.  It was then that you realized your shirt was still still wet from Dave throwing you into the pool.  After screaming your head off at him (while he just laughed, what a fucking asshole) he went to his room to get you a shirt.

So now you're sitting between Kanaya and Dave, wearing the latter's sweatshirt, as everyone giggles around the bonfire Rose had lit.  In front of you is a burning sunset, casting a golden glow on your small group of friends.

Maybe it's the fire, maybe it's the huge red sweatshirt that feels like a blanket (the sleeves completely swallow up your hands, it's so cozy), or maybe it's the feel of two familiar bodies pressing against your side, but as you curl into a ball you feel a tingly sort of warmth unfurl in your chest.

 

* * *

 

Warm feeling gone.

_Warm feeling so fucking gone it's not even funny why the fuck are you laughing, Dave_.

"Oh my god," you whisper as a skinny woman saws her arm off.  "Oh my god, no, shut up, Strider."

"It's a fucking movie!" he laughs, not even flinching at the girl's screams of agony.

"Why are we watching this?" you hiss, hiding your face in your hands.

"It's _Halloween_ , come on, what's Halloween without horror movies?"

"Why couldn't we have watched _The Nightmare Before Christmas_?"

"Because we're not babies, Karkat," Vriska says.  She's staring at the screen with a wide smile, and you weren't sure which is scarier: her, or the movie.

"It's hard to be scared when you can't see what's happening," Terezi says.

"It's hard to be scared when it's so funny!" Jade giggles.

You glance over at Kanaya, who is pale and clutching tightly to Rose's hand.  Rose looks thoroughly disgusted by the film, but she's putting on a brave face.  That leaves John and Roxy, who are both clinging to each other and trembling (John more so than Roxy). 

“You guys _do_ have another television somewhere in the house, right?” you ask Dave.

“Huh?”  He turns away from the bloody image on the scene (which you can see reflected in his glasses, holy shit).  “Yeah, there’s one in my room, one in Rose’s, another small one in the kitchen, and one in the living ”

You stand up suddenly, almost throwing popcorn all over the floor.

“Anyone who wants to watch another movie can come with me,” you say, and John is off the floor in seconds.

“ _Nightmare Before Christmas_?” he asks, already eying the box on the coffee table.

“Yes,” you say.

“Let’s go,” John says, grabbing the movie.

In the end, Roxy, Rose, Kanaya, and John join you in the trek out of the basement, each of you ignoring the other four throwing insults at your back (“That was only the opening scene, you wimps!”).

 

* * *

 

You love _The Nightmare Before Christmas_.

You don’t love being the only person in the room who isn’t paired off with someone else.

As Jack and Sally serenade each other on the weird swirly hill, Rose and Kanaya have already begun sucking face as if there weren’t three other people in the room.  Roxy and John aren’t making out like the other couple—they aren’t even kissing, actually.  But they’re holding hands and giggling and blushing and generally ignoring both you and the movie.

Your life sucks.

“I’m going to get more popcorn,” you announce, standing up.

Nobody even glances at you.

You grumble loudly as you leave.

 

* * *

 

You’re staring dismally at the glowing red numbers on the timer when Dave appears out of nowhere.

“Your movie over?” he asks.

You scream and fall off your chair.  But not onto the floor, oh no, that would be too kind.

You fall into Dave’s arms.

He scared you and then had the reflexes to catch you.

“Whoops,” he says.

You push yourself away from him and hope that the darkness is hiding the heat in your cheeks.  “Fuck you,” you growl.

He smirks.  “Gotta take me out to dinner first, Karbabe, I’m no easy sleaze.”

“Do you want another bruise?”

Dave laughs, but you see him take a step back just in case.  “Hey, watch it, this one just faded from slight purple to hickey-red, I don’t need another one.”

You glower at him.  He flashes his shit-eating grin.

“If you must know,” you say, turning back to the popcorn timer, “my movie was not finished when I left, but it’s definitely finished by now.”

“Then why’d you leave?”  Dave takes a seat on the counter (which makes no fucking sense to you but okay).  “You seemed pretty excited to watch it.”

“And I was,” you say.  “But then Rose and Kanaya started making out and John and Roxy were getting all flirty, and I was fifth-wheeled.”

“Oh.”  There’s a weird tone to Dave’s voice that you choose not to dwell on.  “Good for Rose and Kanaya, I guess? I know they’ve been dancing around each other since spring of last year."

“I mean, yeah, I’m totally happy for them.”  You take a seat next to Dave (in a chair like a normal human being).  “Kanaya’s my best friend and it’s awesome to see her finally getting her crush.  But it’s kind of annoying that they picked right then to finally make a move.  Like, they were flirting with each other for _months_ , why couldn’t they have made a move during any one of those times?”

He nods in agreement.  “A little inconsiderate.”

“Especially when you think about how long they’ve been flirting,” you say.  “Most of spring, all summer, and now literally every day since school started?  I honestly wasn’t sure if they’d started dating yet or not, I had to keep asking Kan for clarity!”

Dave furrows his brow.  “About their whole delicate flirting and carefully treading around the subject thing, though—”

You shake your head.  “It’s so stupid.”

“I don’t get it!” he cries.  “Why wouldn’t you just make a move if you both obviously like each other?”

“Totally!”  You throw your hands up.  “Like, Jesus Christ, _just fucking kiss already_! The whole prolonging of the actual making out just causes a lot of anxiety for you and them and everyone else when you could just _tell them how you fucking feel_.”

Dave hums thoughtfully, and both of you fall silent.  The only sounds heard in the huge, dark kitchen are the crickets outside and the microwave humming quietly.  Downstairs, you hear someone burst into laughter, but soon that too dies out.

Finally Dave clears his throat.

“So,” he says.  You look over to see him fidgeting with his hands and hair, alternating between scratching the back of his neck and twiddling his thumbs.  He’s staring determinedly at the floor.  “About, like, telling people how you feel—”

He’s cut off by the sudden beep of the microwave.  You suddenly realize that you hadn’t heard any popping noises for the past few minutes.

“Shit,” you say, leaping off of the chair.  “Shit, I burned the popcorn, shit.”

You open the microwave only to be hit in the face with a burnt-smelling cloud of steam.  You begin to cough, waving your arm in front of your face to bat the fumes away.  Dave materializes beside you, a hand on your shoulder as he reaches into the microwave.

“ _FUCK_!”  Dave’s hand snaps back suddenly.  “Fuck, that’s hot.  Just like me.  But shit I think I burned my fingers.”

You stare at him incredulously as he shakes his hand, blowing on it to cool it down.  “You just burned your hand and you managed to stroke your ego with it.”

“It’s a skill,” he says, but his heart doesn’t sound into it.  “Can you open that drawer and get the tongs out for me?”

You do what he asked, and he uses the tongs to reach into the microwave and pull out the sizzling bag of popcorn.  The two of you stare at it for a moment before Dave says, “Yeah, this one’s a lost cause,” and dumps it into a trash can.

“So,” you say as he rinses the ends of the tong in the sink and slides it back into the drawer.  “What were you going to say?”

Dave stiffens suddenly.  “Uh.  You know what?  It doesn’t matter, really.  Forget it.”

“What? Come on.”  You poke his side.  “Tell me.”

“No, seriously, it was fucking stupid—”

“YO, FUCKASS!”

Both of you flinch at Jade’s sudden scream.  The tiny girl comes bouncing into the kitchen, grinning wildly.

“What?” you snap.

“It’s time to go!” she says, giggling.  “John’s in the car already, and Kanaya’s just saying goodbye to Rose.”

You feel the heavy weight of disappointment settle in your chest, but you have no idea why it’s there.  “Sure, I’ll be out in a second.”

Jade nods.  “Alrighty!  I’ll be in the car!”

As she skips out of the room, you turn back to Dave.  “Strider, seriously, what the hell—”

“Go,” he interrupts.  “Don’t keep them waiting.  Thanks for coming and all that.  Bye.”

You don’t know why you care so much, but you feel like he was about to say something important and _you really want to know what it was_.  But Dave is walking away from you, leaving you standing alone in the dark kitchen, and from the way his shoulders are set you know he's not going to tell you anything.

Fuck him.

 

* * *

 

Dave is acting weird.

Like, _really_ weird.  Weirder than normal.  It's starting to scare you.

"Why?" you ask suddenly.

"Why what?" Kanaya asks.  Her eyes are off-focus and there's a tiny smile on her face that's been there since the party.

"Why is he acting weird?"

"Why is who acting weird?"

"Dave," Sollux answers for you.

"How do you know?" you demand.

"I thit with you at lunch, dumbath," he explains. "But yeah, Dave ith bein' ethpethially weird."

Kanaya's blissful smile is gone.  You feel kind of guilty about that.  "He's being weird?"

" _Really_ weird!" you cry.  "Why is he being weird?"

"In what way is he being weird?"

"He'th alternatin' between bein' loud an' overly aggrethive to bein' quiet ath fuck," Sollux explains.  "It'th kind of annyoin'."

Kanaya's brows furrow together.  "Since when?"

"Since Friday," you say.

"Altho he ignoreth me completely," Sollux adds.  "Like, not that I really care, but he'th uthually chatty with both of uth."

Kanaya is frowning. "That's concerning," she says.  "I'll ask Rose if she's noticed anything."

 

* * *

 

"She's noticed something."

"Wow, no 'hello'?" you say sarcastically, pinching the phone between your ear and your shoulder.  "Who's noticed what?"

"Rose has noticed Dave being weird."  Kanaya's voice is serious.  "She says he's been unusually quiet and moody."

"Shit," you say.

"There's more, though."  Something about her tone sends a chill down your spine.  "Rose said that in the weeks leading up to the party he was in an uncharacteristically good mood."

You wait, expecting more information, but Kanaya is silent.  "Uh, okay?  What's that supposed to mean?"

" _Oh my god Karkat you are so unbelievably dense_ ," Kanaya groans.  "Karkat, what happened in the weeks leading up to the party?"

"Uh."  You think back.  "I threw up on his shoes?"

"Besides that," she snaps.  "You guys started talking, right?"

"Well, yeah," you say.  "That also happened."

"So, you start talking to Dave."  She speaks as though you're a toddler.  "He becomes happy.  Connect the dots, Karkat."

You narrow your eyes at her through the phone.  "Kanaya, I don't know what yaoi fantasy you have playing out in your head, but there's no way what you're thinking is true."

"Oh my god, Karkat."  She sounds ready to punch you in the face.  "Fine.  He has no interest in you at all.  But can you really say you feel nothing for him?"

"Yes," you say easily.

" _UUUUUUGH_."  You have never heard Kanaya make such an undignified sound in your entire life.  "Fine.  Fine!  But do you still _hate_ him?  And don't just say yes because that's what you want the answer to be.  Do you _really_ hate him?"

You think.  Dave pisses you the hell off, that much can't be denied.  His humor is chaotic and his ego larger than the sun.  But he listens, you guess, and isn't always a complete ass.

"I guess not," you say.  "He's still an asshole, though."

Kanaya mutters something under her breath.  "Okay.  I'll live with that."

"What's that supposed to me—"

"But that's not the main issue here," Kanaya interrupts.  "Dave is being weird."

"Right."

"What are you going to do?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, you’d better think of something.”

“Hey,” you protest.  “I’m not the thinker here.  That’s you.”

“That is true.”

“Wow, fuck you.”

“Apologies, Karkat, I don’t swing that way.”

“Haha, wow, that was original.”  Out of sheer luck, you happen to glance at the clock.  “Wow, shit, it’s pretty late, I should go to bed.”

“Goodnight, Karkat,” Kanaya says.  You like it when she isn’t mad at your unbelievable stupidity.  “Sweet dreams.”

 

* * *

 

You do not have sweet dreams.

You have dreams that ruin your life.

You have dreams with lips and hands and a burning heat, dreams that have you shaking when you wake up.

You have dreams that leave you hard and aching, with Dave’s name on your lips.

“Fuck,” you hiss into the darkness of your room.  “Fuck, shit, damnit, Jesus Christ, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck _oh my god_ fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuckfuckfuckfuck_ —”

 

* * *

 

Fine.

You admit it.

You’re gay as hell for Dave Strider.

(Not that you weren’t gay as hell before he came into the picture, but still.)

You spend all of first and second period trying and failing to not stare at his (stupid fucking) jawline or his legs or his ass or—

You want to cry.

Fuck your life.

 

* * *

 

“Alright, now _you_  are the one acting weird,” Kanaya says.  “What’s wrong?”

“I hate my fucking life and I want to die,” you tell her.  “Woe is me, I am angsty teen, let me go sob over my emo bands.”

“Karkat—”

“THEY’RE THE ONLY ONES WHO UNDERSTAND ME, KANAYA,” you scream.

The teacher glares at you from across the room, but she’s long given up on telling you to reign in your volume.

“I give up,” Kanaya sighs.

“Wow,” Sollux says.  “Aradia can’t pothibly get here thoon enough.”

“Who?” you demand.

“Aradia,” he says.  “My girlfriend.”

“What the _fuck_?”  This isn’t fair.  “Since when do you have a _girlfriend_?”

“Thinthe, like, forever.”  He’s totally gloating now.  You will kill him.  “The wath thtudyin’ abroad over the thummer and for part of the thchool year, tho now the’th comin’ back in a few dayth.”

“Will we meet her?” you ask, narrowing your eyes suspiciously.

“Yeah, the’th gonna be in thith clath, dumbath.”  He sighs.  “I can’t wait for thomeone who’th not mental to thare my pain with me.”

“What pain?”

“The pain of dealing with you,” he snaps.

You flip him off.

“This isn’t fair,” you moan.  “Kanaya has a girlfriend, _you_ have a girlfriend, John and Roxy are practically dating, Terezi and Vriska have a thing, and I’m here knitting sweaters for my six dozen cats!”  You throw your hands up.  “ _Shoot_ me, somebody!”

Kanaya spins around to face you, and she’s glaring.  “Karkat.”

“Oh no.”  You shake your head.  “No, don’t you dare do this to me, Dave and I are _never going to happen_ because Dave _does not have standards so low_.”

Kanaya’s eyes widen.  “Your reasoning has changed.”

“Uh.”  Whoops.  “Yes?”

“ _Gaaaaaaaaaay_ ,” Sollux whispers.

You actually manage to hit him this time.

 

* * *

 

Gym is terrible.

The locker room is terrible.

Seeing Dave run around in a sleeveless shirt and get ridiculously sweaty is terrible.

Everything is terrible.

“Karkat, you can’t just let them run past you like that!” the teacher yells at you from their seat in front of the fan.  “You’re on defense, you gotta be aggressive.”

“But I don’t want to fucking die!” you mutter to yourself as your teammates glare at you.  What do you care what they think.  You fail to see how floor hockey will help you succeed in life.

In the middle of the gym, Dave and some kid on your team face off.  Unsurprisingly, Dave maneuvers the ball (it’s not even a puck, the fuck kind of sport is this) around the kid on your team with ease.  Now he’s running towards you, doing some weird thing with his hockey stick and the ball that looks impressively douchey, and you’re about to wet yourself.

“Don’t let Dave pass you, Karkat!” shouts the girl covering your goal.

“Uh.”  You are going to die.

You hold your stick out to trip him.

Wonder of wonders, it works.

Dave goes down in a flurry of hands and legs and hockey sticks.  You’re feeling triumphant (even though you know that wasn’t allowed) until the red tip of his hockey stick comes up and whacks you in the face.

Suddenly you’re both on the ground.

“What the fuck just happened?” you say, staring at the ceiling in a daze.

“I don’t know man.”  Dave only fell to his knees, not onto his back like you did.  Out of the corner of your eye you see him stand up.  “Oh shit, your face!”

“Wow, rude,” you say.  Dave is standing above you, worry creasing his brows, and wow he looks really nice right now.

“Uh.”  Dave blinks.

Shit.  “Did I say that out loud?” you ask.

“You’re bleeding,” he says instead of answering, so you assume that’s a yes.  “And I think you’re concussed.”

“Nurse?” you ask.

“Yes.”

 

* * *

 

On the walk to the nurse, Dave gives you his shirt so you can stop your blood from getting all over the floor.

There are his abs again.

You would appreciate this walk to the nurse’s office much more if there wasn’t such a tense, uncomfortable silence.

At least there are abs.

 

* * *

 

“ _You_ two?”  The nurse looks exhausted.  “What happened?"

“I tripped him so he hit me with his stick,” you say.

The nurse sighs.  “I’ll go get the bandages and ice packs.”

Dave somehow uses his banged-up knees as an excuse to stay.  You think the nurse just doesn’t care.  The two of you end up in the squishy cots in the back corner of the room, sitting in tense silence as some other student vomits violently on the nurse’s desk.  You want to remark on how hysterical that whole picture is (the kid is sobbing apologies as the nurse just stands there with her face in her hands), but you don’t know what to say.

“Um.”  Dave clears his throat.  “Is your head okay?”

“Uh, it’s kind of throbbing,” you say.  “But I don’t think I’m concussed.  Me saying things accidentally was just me being stupid.”

You shouldn’t have brought that up.  Now he’s going to ask what you meant by that, and you’ll be forced to confess to him, and then he’ll say that he’s not interested—hell, he’s probably not even _gay_ —and you’ll die forever alone.

“Do you—”

“I’m sorry,” you blurt.

Dave blinks.  “What—”

“Sorry for, uh, saying you look nice.”  Wow, cringe.  You thank god that your ice pack is covering half your face.  “That was—um, an accident, except it was true so—shit, I—”

“That’s.”  You hear Dave swallow.  “That’s okay.  I mean, that’s cool.  It’s cool if you think that.”

This is the most terrible conversation you’ve ever had.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s—it’s cool, because I’ve kind of had this—uh, this huge, terrible, massive, embarrassing crush on you since, like, the beginning of the year and _wowgodthisisterriblewhydidIsaythat_.”

“Oh.”  You can’t breathe.  You can’t swallow.  You can barely process anything except for “ _what the fuck is happening_.”  “Uh, really?”

Dave chuckles nervously.  “Yeah, really.  Like, it’s pretty bad.  And, uh, you seemed into me too, so I almost told you during our Halloween party but I chickened out—Karkat, can you _please_ say something already I’m kind of—”

“Can we make out?” you ask.  “Like, right now?”

Dave chokes on his own spit.

“Uh—”  He coughs violently, hitting his own chest.  “Oh god, y–yeah, we can—shit–”  He breaks off into more coughing.

“Don’t die,” you say helpfully.

Dave gets himself back under control and takes a deep breath.  “So, uh, we can’t do that here—”

“Behind the stage,” you say.  “In the auditorium.  Backstage.  That place.”

“O–okay.”

“I’m going to go tell the nurse we’re okay to go back to class,” you say, sitting up.  “You’ll probably need to find another shirt.”

“Yeah, I’ll go—I’ll go do that.”

You nod.  “Cool.”

 

* * *

 

You end up running down the hallway hand-in-hand, both of you kind of giggling at nothing.  You lead the way, sliding into bathrooms and doorways whenever you see a teacher or another student.  When you reach the auditorium, you hold the door open for Dave.

“Swoon,” he says.  “What a gentleman.”

“Shut up,” you say, but you’re laughing too much for it to have any conviction.

Dave helps you climb onto the stage, and you help to pull him up.  The dim lights backstage are always on, so you can just barely see where you’re going as you pull him past props and settings and fake trees.

You’re expecting some kind of awkward pause when you reach your destination, but the second you begin to slow down Dave walks you into the wall and—

Oh.

Yes.

This is good.

Your giddy laughter dissolves into a soft sigh as Dave threads his fingers in your hair and stoops down to catch your mouth with his.  It’s pretty slow and kind of tentative, and your teen hormones are screaming at him to pick you up and kiss you roughly against the wall, but you figure there’ll be time for that later.  For now, you drink up what you can, the feel of his lips moving against yours and his (amazing fucking) jawline under your fingers sending your mind reeling.

Some distant corner of your mind notes that Dave is keeping his hips away from yours, and you’re grateful for that.  So grateful, in fact, that you pull away and latch your teeth onto the side of his jaw, right where you punched him, just like you’ve been wanting to for fuck knows how long.  For a split second you’re afraid that was too much, too soon, but then his eyes widen and he releases a low, breathy moan and you decide that, wow, that’s a sound you could bear to hear more often.

Dave is nice.

Dave is great.

Dave is infuriating and he makes you want to tear your hair out.

Dave is amazing.

Dave is pulling away.

Dave is _pulling away what the fuck Dave_.

“Where you going?” you ask.  Your voice is unnecessarily shaky.

“Uh—”

“Hello,” Kanaya says cheerfully, standing ten feet away with the most awful smile on her face.

Your eyes widen in surprise.  “Hi,” you reply with equal cheer.  Dave shifts awkwardly.  You point to him and say, “look what I got.”

Her smile widens.  “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” you say, grinning proudly.  “I think I’m gonna keep him.”

“Good for you.”

“Why are you here?” Dave asks.

“I was fetching some unfinished costumes to work on in my fashion class,” she explains.  “This period is almost over, so you might want to return to the locker room and change out of your gym clothes.”

“Oh, right,” you say.  “Let’s go, Dave”

Kanaya watches you leave with a smirk.  With Dave in front of you, you are free to point at his back and hold your thumbs up, grinning widely.

Kanaya shakes her head, but she doesn’t stop smiling.

 

* * *

 

You and Dave walk back to gym holding hands and you feel like you’re flying.

 

* * *

 

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you love high school because sometimes your boyfriend Dave will come to school with marks on his neck that you put there the night before and other times you forget to study for tests because you’re too busy straddling his hips and kissing him senseless and—

Yeah.  Life is good.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> first fic i've ever actually finished ayyyyy


End file.
